Photographic Tendencies
by Irrevocable Truth
Summary: All of a sudden, her world was revolving around photographs, and he couldn't fit himself into the picture.


**Photographic Tendencies**

By: Irrevocable Truth

Dedicated to: EzMouse (Princess of my Universe)

"Don't you think photographs are cool, Tsubasa-senpai?" Mikan chirps, eyeing the camera Tsubasa was fiddling around with, cautious and wary in anticipation of _her_ camera suddenly falling and smashing into pieces.

He pauses contemplatively before responding, "You think so, hm?" Almost a bit breathless, she answers a quick and lovely yes.

She liked photography, he knew. She painstakingly gave up howalon and her other selfish luxuries for months just to buy a camera of her own; and he figures it must've been hard on her. After all, her allowance wasn't much.

She was twelve and still in childish pigtails when she came running to him, squealing like crazy, hugging a box to her chest tightly, afraid she might trip and break its contents.

"Tsubasa-senpai, look! I finally," she panted, completely exhausted, before slouching beside him on the bench he had been resting on. "I finally had enough money for a camera, and I screamed when I realized it and I caught the bus to Central Town and I would've called you but I was so excited and—"

She was so eager and tired and apologetic all at the same time and it reflected on her face. It was so beautiful that he laughed at her mid-sentence.

"It's alright, Mikan," he said, patting the young brunette's head.

She smiled gratefully.

Mikan messed about with the box, opening it and completely disregarding the Beginner's Manual neatly folded. She went ahead and switched the camera on, but she was lost amidst all the buttons and options.

He chuckled and said, "Do you need any help with that?"

"Eh? Tsubasa-senpai, you know how to use this thing?" Mikan replied in awe.

"Sort of," he answered. He leaned closer to her, pointing to the camera and giving her a brief lecture on the basics. "You can control the exposure using the aperture and the shutter."

"Aper-what?" She asked as she furrowed her brows.

"Aperture," he repeated. "It's the opening that you can change the size of depending on how much light you need. There's the aperture control for that…" he blabbered on, brushing through the things she needed to know. Sure, she could've learned this from the internet or from a book, or maybe figured it out herself.

But he liked the excuse for closeness.

**x-x-x**

It felt wrong to see her in the way he did. He felt like she was so beautiful and so innocent and so.. enthralling. She was like his little sister, and it was so _wrong_ to see your sister in that manner, but it was the way things were.

When they were together, she always had a bunch of photographs to show him. Natsume under the sakura tree, Ruka with his animals, Hotaru with her invention, Narumi in an absurd costume, a cherry blossom, the pavement, shoes, socks.. and the list goes on.

They were beautiful, really; it almost looked like something from a professional. The lighting was always great, and she'd explore all kinds of different angles just to find one where the scene looked perfect. Whether it was on top of a tree or beside a garbage can, if the view is good, it was worth it. She claimed she was trying her best simply because this was one of the only things she was good at.

He wanted to object and tell her she was amazing at so many other things: smiling, laughing, comforting people, making guys fall in love. But he didn't, of course, because that's not what big brothers tell their little sisters. They cheer them on, they support their dreams and fight with them occasionally.

"Why do you like taking pictures so much?" he asked one day.

She paused munching on a piece of strawberry gum before answering, "I want to capture all the good memories, of course!"

She talked about her day as she ranted about how Jinno-sensei was the absolute meanest person on earth and how she didn't get Math and variables at all, and he reacted accordingly. She asked about his day, and he told her about this creepy girl with excessively huge pink glasses who was stalking him and buying pictures of him off of a certain lavender-eyed blackmailer.

"Oh, that reminds me," she pulled out something squeezed between the pages of her Science book, caught between lessons on stars and their life cycles: another picture.

"This is the party we had for our class, something sudden that Koko just wanted out of the blue, and this is my favorite picture," she held it up for him to see. "See? Almost everyone is smiling, except for Natsume, he's such a party pooper. But his eyes seem happy ..and that makes me happy, too, in a way. I feel so nice seeing everyone happy like that. These are the types of pictures I wanna take all the time, Tsubasa-senpai. My favorite moments…" she drifted off, staring at the picture, smiling to herself.

There was a silence, Tsubasa a bit irresolute.

"Why don't you ever take pictures when you're with me?" he asked. She looked into his eyes, as if trying to find meaning behind his question –as if trying to unearth the feelings he was so bent on trying to scrape off his entity and just bury in some dark deserted graveyard.

He laughed nervously.

"That's ..because I feel weird when I'm with senpai," she murmurs, red climbing all the way up her cheeks.

She shouldn't have said that; she really shouldn't have. Because as soon as she did all that non-platonic love he was harboring came surfacing back up and he didn't welcome it at all.

He pauses his laughter, wide-eyed, and asks, "What kind of weird?

"I don't know," she mutters embarrassedly. "But I feel like I can't waste time. I feel like it takes too much to turn on the camera, point, shoot – and I feel like if I do all that I won't be able to take it all in. The weird feeling, that is."

_I feel like every moment with you should last forever, should be captured in my heart instead of on a device that simply records the images, without the sound, without the emotion, without the throbbing happiness pulsing through me._ But she didn't say this part out loud.

He stays silent, and she hesitates. "Is that crazy?"

"No, Mikan." He smiles at his kouhai, a girl torn between her emotions, a girl in love with making memories and living in the moment. "It's not crazy at all."

**x-x-x**

**Note**: Kyaaaa. I know, I know. It's pretty lame, and it's my first time writing a TsubasaMikan fic and I really don't know what to do. Feel free to critique or flame the story, it might help me improve :D Thanks; take care.


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